We hope everyone had a good weekend. Sadly, we have to start this week’s “Over the Weekend” with more sad news about production delays due to COVID, as the seventh and final season of Amazon Studio‘s Bosch has shut down production for a week due to a positive COVID test, according to Deadline. The shutdown on the series starring Titus Welliver is Amazon’s longest running series, and the single positive test, part of the show’s safety protocols, triggered the Los Angeles and California contact tracing protocols, although production is set to resume this Friday. What’s even more scary from the Deadline story is a list of all the scripted series that have had to pause production due to COVID — many that haven’t been announced previously. The list includes CBS All Access’ Why Women Kill, Apple TV+’s Mystic Quest, ABC’s Call Your Mother and For Life, TNT’s Claws, HBO’s The Gilded Age, Nat Geo’s Genius: Aretha, Netflix’s The Witcher and Vikings: Valhalla, NBC’s Chicago Fire and Chicago Med, as well as Young Sheldon, Fox’s The Resident, Peacock series Rutherford Falls, Disney+’s Big Shot, the CW’s All American, as well as the long-running daytime drama, Days Of Our Lives. Below the Line has reported on maybe half of those COVID shutdowns, which means that production is generally trying to keep such things quiet.
Some better news comes from Netflix, as it has renewed the comedy series Space Force, starring Steve Carell, for a second season. This renewal comes in the wake of a number of cancellations of other popular series, like GLOW, which was renewed earlier in the year but then Netflix did an about-face due to the additional costs required for COVID safety protocols.
A few attachments announced over the weekend include the report that Crazy Rich Asians Director Jon M. Chu will be directing a live-action Lilo and Stitch movie for Disney+.
It was also announced that Chris Pratt, who plays Starlord in Marvel Studios‘ Guardians of the Galaxy movies, will be appearing in Taika Waititi‘s Thor: Love and Thunder, the fourth movie in that series, which is set to start in Australia in January, 2021. You can learn more about ongoing productions by subscribing to Below the Line‘s Production Listings.
Speaking of Guardians of the Galaxy, actor Sylvester Stallone, who made a cameo at the end of that movie’s sequel, posted a video on Instagram proclaiming he would be reuniting with director James Gunn for next year’s The Suicide Squad, which had been finishing its shoot in order to finalize post before its August 6, 2021 release date. Although Sly’s video was quickly deleted, Gunn then posted a picture of himself with Stallone on his own Instagram.
There’s been many questions about how Marvel Studios and filmmaker Ryan Coogler would proceed with the sequel to 2018’s hit Black Panther after the tragic death of that film’s star Chadwick Boseman earlier this year. Executive Producer Victoria Alonso went on the record in an interview with Argentine newspaper Clárin, saying that the studio would not be using a digital double using CG for the late Boseman. When asked, she replied, “No, there’s only one Chadwick, and he’s no longer with us. Sadly, our king has died in real life, not only in fiction, and we’re taking a little time to see how we continue the story and how to honor this chapter of what has unexpectedly happened to us, so painful and terrible to be honest. Chadwick wasn’t only a wonderful human being, every day of the 5 years we spent together, but also, I believe, that what he did as a character elevated us as a company, and has left his moment on history.”
The Critics Choice Association — of which Below the Line‘s Edward Douglas is a member — announced their 5th annual Critics Choice Documentary Awards, and Kristen Johnson‘s Dick Johnson is Dead, currently on Netflix, won both for Best Documentary Feature and Director. More importantly, the CCA gives away technical awards each year, and this year’s award for Best Cinematography went to Roger Horrrocks for My Octopus Teacher (also on Netflix), and Best Editing went to Lindy Jankura, Alexis Johnson and Alex Keipper for their work on Alex Gibney‘s COVID doc, Totally Under Control (on Hulu). Marco Beltrami, Branon Roberts and Buck Sanders won the award for Best Score for Dawn Porter‘s The Way I See It, which was released theatrically by Focus Feature.
Not too much to say about the weekend box office, as Universal Pictures‘ horror-comedy Freaky, starring Vince Vaughn, topped the box office with a measly $3.7 million in 2,472 theaters. With many regions in the States and across the globe shutting things down again, there’s a good chance that many of the movie theaters currently open will be shut before Thanksgiving, which doesn’t bode well for the future of theatrical. According to THR, theaters in San Diego and San Francisco have already been reshuttered, as well as in Oregon. Major areas like New York City and Los Angeles have not reopened in the eight months since they were shut down from the very earliest signs of COVID-19.
Over the weekend, HBO Max posted the first trailer for the Meryl Streep film Let Them All Talk, which will debut on the streamer starting December 10. The tagline for the film directed by Steven Soderbergh is: “The story of a celebrated author (Meryl Streep) who takes a journey with some old friends to have some fun and heal old wounds. Her nephew comes along to wrangle the ladies and finds himself involved with a young literary agent.”
